Award Data

Higher efficiency solar cells are needed to reduce solar array mass, volume, and cost for Air Force space missions. Intermediate-band quantum-dot (QD) solar cells can yield dramatically higher efficiencies than current multi-junction (MJ) technologies. However, several issues must be addressed to demonstrate manufacturable, high efficiency devices. CFDRC aims to develop: 1) High-efficiency, ligh ...

Existing computer combat wargames offer a sophisticated and high fidelity base platform for accurately modeling standard combat scenarios. However, the rapid development of UAV capabilities in terms of sizes, weapons, sensors, communications and flight ability is presenting a new challenge for these simulations. At the same time, the general state of world affairs is changing such that the likeli ...

The neurocognitive health of U.S. service members plays a vital role in the defense of the United States. It is critical to a service member"s effectiveness, to force readiness, and it is a key component of a service member"s successful reintegration into family life and society following deployment. Increased rates of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and psychological health problems experien ...

The goal of the Phase I project is to develop a COTS system into a modular unit for detection, tracking and classification of large marine organisms such as manatees and turtles. The Kongsberg Mesotech M3 Sonar is a 500 kHz multibeam that can resolve objects as far as 150 m. This compact system has been tested to detect Florida manatees by Dr. Kevin Boswell and will be used by well qualified marin ...

Recent advances in dielectric and magnetic materials have spurred renewed interest in the field of solid state pulse and RF burst generation using Non-Linear Transmission Lines (NLTL) . The NLTL approach to HPM and UWB generation eliminates the need for an electron beam, vacuum system and magnets required in conventional HPM sources. Furthermore, the novel waveforms of NLTL generated pulses promi ...

The rapid ascent and adoption of social media as the dominant form of communication has led to significant analysis challenges. In particular, there is a gap in theoretically informed methods to analyze data mined and collected from social media. One primary cause of this gap is the lack of fusing structural sources of information (e.g. social network topology) with non-structural sources (message ...

We apply the theory of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) to the design of guidance algorithms for controlling the motion of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with on-board sensors for tracking multiple ground targets. While POMDPs are intractable to optimize exactly, principled approximation methods can be devised based on Bellman’s principle. We introduce a new approximation ...

Pressure gain combustion has the potential to significantly improve the specific fuel consumption for gas turbine engines by realizing a pressure rise through the combustor as opposed to a pressure drop. One drawback to this form of combustion is the cycl

Based on our success in developing the world first commercial high power femtosecond fiber laser system and our leading technology development in ultrashort pulsed fiber laser and nonlinear fiber optics, PolarOnyx proposes, for the first time, a compact all fiber based high power (>kW) mid-IR supercontinuum source (1-5 micron) to meet with the requirement of the AF solicitation AF09-BT01. The lase ...

The mission of this proposed research is to develop ultracapacitors (also known as electrochemical or supercapacitors) to address an array of military applications. These applications include pulsed power for directed-energy and kinetic-energy weapons, sensors, and power supplies and control systems for aircraft and spacecraft. The proposed innovation employs carbon nanotubes (CNTs) coated with p ...